It is always quiet in the residential cul-de-sac in which Amy and Paige live. Automated bots sweep over carefully manicured front lawns. Flaxen-haired young kids have their bot move a magnetic ramp back and forth so they can practice flips with their hoverboards, not caring about the havoc the ramp’s magnetism is wreaking on the bot’s insides. Some of the two-story houses have balconies facing their backyards, and some of them have pools in the front. Some people hang birdboxes in their verandas facing the street, while wind chimes sing on the front porches of others. Some would look at this and see paradise, but, as more time passes, Ify tries to find less and less reason to come here. The automated cleaners, the birdsong she can hear from somewhere overhead—it’s all fake. Even the bees or flies or whatever monster insect was concocted in a lab to mimic the summertime hum. Ify sets a small charge in the gold rings on her braids to emit a constant, near-silent buzz that zaps the insects when they get near enough to her, short-circuiting them and leaving them twitching on the ground. By the time she reaches Amy and Paige’s front porch, a ribbon of dead bees trails behind her.
Ify notices a new plaque above the front door. Emblazoned on the raised wood is the phrase Wir schaffen das.
Just as she’s about to press her palm to the scanner, the front door slides open and Paige spreads her arms and shrieks her welcome. “Ify!” Instantly, she swallows Ify in her embrace, smushing Ify’s face into the loosely tied once-gold, now-silver ponytail draped over her shoulder. “Oh, so glad you could make it. Come, come, come.” And she nearly drags Ify by the arm over the threshold. “IFY’S IN!” Paige shouts up the front steps all the way to the second floor, even though a biometric scan would have announced Ify by now. Paige turns to Ify. “You’re just in time, dinner’s just about ready.”
Paige still hasn’t let go of Ify’s arm as they pass through the living room with its hand-knitted pillows and blankets, past a music room where untouched instruments have been collecting dust for at least a year and a half now, and into the joint dining room/kitchen.
Steam fills the room, billowing in clouds so thick Ify coughs. Paige waves some of it away to reveal Amy in a loose pink sleeveless gown bent over a boiling pot of red sauce. She scoops some out with a wooden spoon.
Paige nudges Ify forward, and Ify skids to a halt just far enough away that Amy, without pausing, can turn and put the spoon right to Ify’s lips.
“Too hot! Too hot!” Ify leaps away and flaps at her tongue and lips. “Mrs. Reed!”
Paige puts her fists to her hips. “Oh, there she goes with that Mrs. Reed nonsense again! Well, Ify, if Amy’s Mrs. Reed, then what am I, huh?”
Ify instinctively ducks her head amid the chaos of their playful shouting. “Can I at least sit down?”
Amy shoos Ify away with her dripping spoon, and Ify takes a seat in one of the faux-wooden antique bistro chairs by the rectangular table. Paige sits at the head and gazes lovingly at Amy as her wife cooks.
Ify snatches the woven basket of warm bread rolls from beside Paige’s elbow and stuffs one into her mouth. “What’s with the sign?”
“The sign?” Paige asks.
“Yeah, out front.” She rests her hand on the table, and up from her gloved palm floats a holographic snapshot of the sign above the front door. “Wir schaffen das?”
“Oh, that was Amy’s idea. It’s German. Right, Amy?”
Amy, back turned to them, nods.
“It means We will do it, or something like that.”
Ify swallows the rest of the first roll but takes her time with the second. “Do what? Is it like in a football game? Or getting high marks on an exam?”
“No, more like . . .” Paige considers the ceiling.
“Like doing your homework,” Amy says, gliding to the table and placing a steaming plate of pasta covered in marinara sauce before Ify. “Or finishing your plate.” She winks at Ify in that annoying and obvious way that, Ify has realized, is Amy’s way of being charming. “It’s sort of like a duty. What you’re supposed to do. Like how Paige is supposed to go upstairs and tell Peter that dinner’s ready.”
Paige lets out a loving purr-growl, then smirks and gets up from her chair. She lights a soft kiss into Amy’s hair before vanishing around the corner.
Amy sets places for the rest of the table, then crouches by Ify. “The words on that plaque? They were spoken by a woman named Angela Merkel. Long ago, back when there was a Europe to speak of, she was what they called the chancellor of Germany. Their leader. Near the beginning of the previous century, in 2015, there was a massive refugee crisis. Because of war, many people had to flee the countries they were born in, countries they’d spent their entire lives in. Many of these people came from countries in Africa and the Middle East.”
“I know about the migrant crisis, Amy.” She makes sure her voice is soft so it doesn’t sound like too much of a chastisement.
“Well, when most of the countries with means were refusing refugees or trying to make life as difficult as possible for them, Chancellor Merkel said those words you see on that plaque. We will do it. You know what else she said? ‘Wenn wir uns jetzt noch entschuldigen müssen dafür, dass wir in Notsituationen ein freundliches Gesicht zeigen, dann ist das nicht mein Land.’”
“If we must now begin to apologize for having, in dire circumstances, shown a friendly face, then this is not my country.”
“Exactly. She was a real leader. She was kind when everyone around her thought it was better not to be. It didn’t matter where these people came from, what color they were. They were in distress, and she had the power to help them.” She lowers her voice, grows serious. “It means a lot to me that you would help us with Peter. He’s . . . broken.”
Like I was . . .
Ify’s heart softens. She puts her hand on top of Amy’s. Their fingers intertwine. “I am happy to help. Wir schaffen das,” she says, which gets Amy giggling.
“Oh, there he is!” Amy scurries off into the hallway, and Ify rises to her feet.
The smoke is nearly gone. Tendrils steam from every plate, but the air is clear. So clear that once Peter steps into the light, Ify can take in all his features at once.
Her heart stops. It can’t be . . .
Paige looks down at Peter, as dark as Ify, with a small single scar on each cheek and what looks like a sewn bullet hole near the top of his head. But those eyes. Ify has seen those eyes before.
In a detention center, on the other side of an invisible electric field. His hands were bound by metal restraints and rested in his lap. A collar ringed his neck, and Ify stood on the other side of the electric field, dressed as a Nigerian official with Nigeria’s best mech pilot beside her, deciding whether or not those eyes deserved to see more grief because of the war the boy was caught fighting.